Karma
by Rainstorm Amaya Arianrhod
Summary: Ark Sool is losing everything. Publicly discredited, he is known as a misogynistic fraud. Can he sink even lower will his actions catch up with him more than they have done? Am not Eoin Colfer, do not sue.
1. Chapter 1

Karma

The young elf-woman named Siofra stopped at a bill-board and examined it with interest. A slight, pale elf with wild black hair and gold earrings, she looked as if one good breeze – a commodity not often found in Haven - could send her toppling over, but a proud tilt to her pointed chin and a powerful stance belied that very statement.

The bill-board read _Women In The LEP_, and featured pictures of female LEP officers against a dark yellow background. Captain Tiamat Neon, the LEP's own personal 'guardian angel', caught Siofra's eye in particular. She looked solid and dependable. It was brand new. Siofra glanced at the front page of her _Haven Daily News_, where the headline said 'Sool To Go'.

'Sool, previously of Internal Affairs at the LEP, is to leave his job as Commander. After it was established by this newspaper that his statement concerning the Zito Probe and specifically ex-Captain Holly Short's role in such was mostly a whitewashed fraud, and that several major errors have been committed in his work, the Council have given Julius Root's replacement the boot. Said Corporal Kelp: "It's a breath of life for the force.' Sool's career as commander has been shrouded with mystery and speculation, beginning as it did with a hasty appointment upon the death of his predecessor, the Zito Probe, Holly Short's sudden resignment and Sool's refusal to allow Ms. Short to attend Commander Root's funeral. The public thought itself home and dry with the spectacular successes of the past six months, although it now emerges that these were acting solely on the information of Ms. Short's detective agency. Ms. Short said simply: "My feelings on this matter are mostly unprintable and not in the Commander's favour, either. I cannot pretend to be sympathetic towards the Commander. NO FURTHER COMMENT."'

"What goes around comes around," Siofra murmured.

Siofra stopped reading and stuffed her newspaper into her rucksack. Doubtless the article would end with something about Artemis Fowl; every article seemed to, but then should one read the newspapers as extensively as this elf did, in eighty years the headlines and articles ran together in black and white soup.

She looked up at the bill-board again and tilted her head to one side. A passing lorry driver whistled at her and she spun around and invoked an obscene gesture at him that you would not suspect such a delicate-looking elf knew. She turned back round and a tiny smile crept onto her angular face. She dug in a pocket, her fingers searching for and finding a gold amulet inset with amethyst on a red silk cord. Her eyes seemed to focus on the middle distance.

"_Just onnne more picture," the photographer crooned. "YEEESSS! That is it! If you could just stay like that..." Click, click, click._

"_Fat chance," a pixie techie muttered in her friend's ear as they posed at a bank of computers. "Hey, Cyan- shall I move a fingertip just to vex him?"_

_Cyan grinned and nodded slightly. She shifted her position as the other techie moved her hand to her hip stealthily and Cyan stretched up to whisper into Captain Linden's ear: "Move a bit, pass it on." _

_When the photographer looked up, he became visibly dismayed. "Ladies, ladies! You have moved!"_

"_Ahh. Apocalypse now! Armageddon! Artemis Fowl!" a medic snapped quietly. "My shift started three minutes ago and I haven't had lunch!" _

Someone bumped violently into Siofra, loosing her fingers from the amulet and pushing her into the road. The temporary sickness and disorientation Siofra knew to be the natural side-effects of using the amulet kept her in the road and the van swerved around her, knocking her over and then it slewed across the road to ensure that she was not seriously hurt. A passerby forcibly detained the gnome who had shoved her into the road as an LEP vehicle crashed into the van broadside, sending its young driver smashing painfully into the plasglass windscreen and the very captain Siofra had just Seen passing on a message in the vision halfway out of the door of the vehicle.

The name of the gnome?

Ark Sool.

He who had yet to atone for his many infractions on what is right and moral.

He who had bent the law a few too many times.

He who had let his temper get the better of him one too many times.

"What goes around comes around," Siofra mouthed almost invisibly as concerned people gathered around her in her fading vision and an ambulance wailed up the street.

Then all feeling was gone in blessed, but impermanent, blackness.

Siofra Aelfgifu's life was not over.

Ark Sool's life was not over either. But it might as well have been.


	2. Guilty

Disclaimer- What do you think? No, I am not Eoin Colfer.

Could Ark Sool sink any lower? The answer to that would have to be-

Well, yes.

Had anyone bothered to look up his records- not the perfect LEP ones, his school ones –they would have seen a very different Ark Sool. They would have seen an unathletic, chubby young gnome with a distinct tendency to bullying and an uncontrollable temper. He had dropped out of school when he was only fifteen. After a serious episode and a night or so in a cell, he reconsidered his life, rid himself of a smoking habit, returned to school and managed to convince everyone that Ark Sool was well and truly back on track.

In this manner he had got a job at Internal Affairs, but although for most of the time his temper remained under control, a characteristic from his bullying days still remained: misogynism.

In other words, Ark Sool was and is a sexist pig. So sexist that he would even fabricate bad records to keep females in Internal Affairs under a certain level.

That was why he hated Holly Short. She was so obviously brilliant, but she broke the rules that he now treasured. In fact she didn't so much break them as smash them. As far as Ark Sool was concerned, Holly Short was a blot on the perfect horizon of his new life- and like Lady Macbeth's bloodstains, she was quite clearly here to stay- unless Ark Sool did something about it.

He tried. He really did. Dredged up every rule in the book, but to no avail. Absolutely none whatsoever. So Sool decided to wait a little, see what further blows Holly dealt her career.

Unfortunately, Holly Short seemed to have learnt the error of her ways, and she now abided strictly by rules and regulations. To say that this pissed Sool off would be putting it mildly; and his control on his temper was starting to fray in an alarming manner.

Then, Julius Root died, and Holly seemed to be the culprit. Ark Sool was in seventh heaven- Holly Short had dug her own grave and handed him the shovel. He was even more delighted when he was promoted to Commander, and spent the hours in between Short's return and the promotion daydreaming about firing her. 'Dishonourable discharge', if he could make it stick.

However, Holly in truth came up smelling of roses. She was innocent. Innocent. Innocent of Commander Root's murder. Innocent of- well, everything. And that infuriated Ark Sool. For the first time in years he lost his hold on his temper and hurled a paperweight at an incoming skivvy, who wisely dropped her papers and dived to the floor.

Finally, after nearly a whole triumphant year, Sool's sins- in this case, the Zito cover-up and his attitude to women –came home to roost, and he was fired. He started to drink again, and then went out for a refreshing walk to try and rid himself of a crushing hangover- he had not completed the Ritual in twenty months. In the process of this, he walked along Cassia Road, a busy street with many vans and cars zipping up and down. He saw a young woman- an elf –studying a billboard avidly, a billboard on which his least favourite members of the LEP featured, including Captains Neon and Linden. Her left hand was dug into the pocket of her yellow jacket and a Haven Daily News was under her arm, the same newspaper that ran a very unflattering article on the front page referring to his dismissal. Her curly black hair contrasted sharply with her jacket, a golden hoop earring, and her pale peaky skin. She was decidedly angular.

Feelings surfaced in Sool. Anger, with more than a touch of insanity.

Somehow, he calmed himself just enough to continue walking at the same pace towards the offending young elf as she spread her newspaper, skimmed the front page, glanced at the billboard and tucked in back under her arm. She dug her left hand back into her pocket and her eyes took on an unseeing look. A behavioural expert would have noticed the set look of Sool's jaw, his clenched fists, and slightly hunched forward posture: no fairy on Cassia Road did.

Sool reached the elf. Violently, he shoved sideways, sending the elf stumbling out into the road, where a vehicle knocked her over. Calmly, Sool continued to walk on. Then another elf laid a grip on his arm- very strongly –and the angry face of Major Aleser Vein, recently promoted and just off his shift, confronted him.

"What do you think you're doing- Sool?" Shock scrolled over his face, replaced by the furious expression. "Do you realise you nearly killed that girl?" he bellowed.

"Looks like I'll be visiting Police Plaza again sooner than I intended," he continued, a little quieter.

Major Vein made Sool watch as they loaded the unconscious girl into an ambulance. Then he dragged Sool off to Police Plaza.

And that was why Ark Sool, misogynist, bully, once Commander, was sitting disconsolate in a barren white cell in Police Plaza, tears streaming down his face- not for Siofra Aelfgifu, who came so close to death, but for himself, who would spend years of his broken, useless life in prison, who would never have another job, never a girlfriend, never a wife, never a daughter or son.

Could you feel sorry for him?

A/N: Hello! You might have worked out that I hate Sool- most of my Artemis fics involve him getting the boot in one way or another. The names –Aleser, Siofra, Aelfgifu, Tiamat, Linden- are all from Behind the Name. I sincerely recommend it. Many thanks (and virtual chocalate cookies) to athleticrulz, my first reviewer , who inspired me to write a second chapter to what was originally a strict oneshot (and for whom a basic definition of misogynism is in there).


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